Assassin's Hunger (13 page)

It was like the first tentative landing of a terraforming survey ship on a dead world: whether the change brought the first gush of free-flowing water or ignited the surface in a fatal burst of failed atmosphere, nothing would ever be the same again.

She wasn’t receiving oxygen! Normally she could last half a firefight without needing to aerate, but he’d stolen the very breath from her body in a mere heartbeat. Her knees—they weren’t even bearing her weight—felt wobbly, and she shifted her hand off his jaw to steady herself.

Which she did by wrapping her fingers behind his neck and pulling him closer.

The friction of his mouth was terrifying—hot and slick as heart’s blood spurting from a mortal wound. But even more shocking was the rasp of his thighs nudging between her parted knees. The abrasion triggered shivers all through her skin and deeper inside her, past the cyber-embeds to her very center. When she gasped, anything to get more air, to cool the rising heat, his tongue dipped past her parted lips and touched hers.

This time, the gush and the ignition were one.

His mouth was insistent, his tongue a tease, first soft and darting, then slow and lingering. With both hands, she clutched at his shoulders. His bare skin almost scorched her palms, as if the fractal pattern was aflame, and her pulse rocketed, thudding in her ears as it hadn’t done even when the ship was under attack. She had thought she’d learned about
wanting
when the twins were working their crystalline charms in the cantina, but this… This was
beyond
.

No wonder Hermitaj had neutralized these impulses. All the worlds they’d marauded through would’ve been left unscathed if she and her fellow soldiers had known about
this
.

Moving on instinct coupled with the combat training that had been her only experience with touch, she locked her heels behind his backside and pulled him closer yet, right into the vee of her legs. He grunted as the fronts of his thighs slammed into the edge of the table.

She should be more careful. He didn’t have her self-healing plysteel implants. The position brought a part of him flush with the soft mound of her basewear, and now she wasn’t flushed, or blushing, she was on
fire
.

And wet. So, so wet.

Her mind whirled at the conflicting sensations. In the UTC-year since the demise of Hermitaj, she’d had fleeting moments like this, but mostly just frustrating. It’d been an easy data search to figure out her libido had been suppressed, but while the words were simple, the concept was baffling. Watching a few vids of the sort Hermitaj had
not
allowed only added to her frustration. And she’d had more pressing concerns at the time, like staying alive.

She had
never
felt so alive as now.

The beating of her pulse through her veins, the stretch of her skin, the trading of breaths, the rush through every nerve was a symphony of sensation even her enhanced neural network couldn’t process. Her vision had narrowed and was sparked with nonexistent stars, and her head swam in the scent of him, some peculiarly rousing mix of drone fuel, pixberries, and lusty male. Her fingers kneaded restlessly at his shoulders, as if she could link the unfinished lines of the tattoo into their final form.

She
wanted
him.

It was the failure of her coding, she knew that, but it didn’t matter. When she’d stood, exposed, out in that broken thruster, the desolate terrain of Khamaseen screaming past far below her feet, she’d taken a moment to wonder whether her lack of programming really only left her one choice: to end herself as Hermitaj had ended.

It would’ve been so easy to just step off into gravity’s embrace and the whirling sand, not to wait for the shriving. There was no reason, no artificially induced resolution holding her back. Just an unenforceable “promise” she’d made to some people she barely knew. But…

This
embrace was much better than gravity’s. It had all the most thrilling parts of freefall, but she wasn’t alone.

“Shaxi…”

Her name—spoken into her mouth, like he was giving her back to herself—had never been said with such
wanting
.

“Eril,” she whispered back.

“I knew you’d be trouble,” he murmured. “I think you could make me forget my own code.”

She laughed soundlessly and tightened her grip on him.

He kissed her again and she felt the lick of heat all the way down to her core.

Raising his head, he put a bit of distance between them. His gray eyes were brightened to silver and his cheeks were flushed. “What happened to your advice that I stay out of your way?”

“That was the responsible, rule-following cyborg speaking. I’m a ruthless mercenary now, out only for my own good.” And she wanted him but good.

She slipped her hands to the front fastener of the vest under his chin, but he caught her hands in his. She gave a light tug, but he resisted. He was stronger than he looked, she thought resentfully.

“This wouldn’t be good for you,” he said. When she scowled at him, he freed one of his hands to sleek her rumpled hair back over her ear. “You can’t know—”

“Actually, I have all the data.”

He shook his head. “There’s more to it than leverage and traction.”

“I will provide the lubrication. Stay away from the sealant.”

The gray in his eyes vacillated between impermeable stone and molten silver. “Well, I guess you have it all planned out.”

She bit her lip, testing the swollen flesh between her teeth. “I only need one more thing.” When he tilted his head, she huffed out a breath. “You.”

“Shaxi…”

“You said that already.” She’d thought she wouldn’t tire of hearing her name again after so long being a designation, but said with that pitying sigh, she didn’t like the sound of it. She let her legs fall open—not the way her body wanted her to—and he stepped back.

He speared his fingers through his hair, disordering the brown waves so the auburn strands glinted under the harsh lights. “Of all the wrong things I’ve done, I think this might be the worst.”

She stiffened at the pain that sliced through her, as if she gutted herself on the torn thruster metal all over again.

“I can’t use you like this,” he continued.

“
I
was using
you
too,” she pointed out. “Or trying to.”

“It’s not the same.”

She focused on the agitated heave of his breath, the tension in his muscles. And lower down, where he’d pressed into her mound. She might not understand all the niceties of sex, but she knew he wasn’t stepping back voluntarily. So what had control of him, if not his
wanting
for her?

She didn’t know, so she asked. “Why don’t you want me?”

He jerked back, as if her question had been a slap. “I do. But just as there is more to it than leverage and lube, there is also more than wanting.”

She scanned her data and found the word neatly labeled right between leverage and lube. “Love.”

This time he recoiled as if she’d shoved an armed plasma grenade into his belly. “No!”

She rescanned her data to see if she’d gotten the definition wrong. But she hadn’t. There was no reason for him to react with such horror. Except that the word came from
her
.

In her years with Hermitaj, in the times when her mind was her own, she’d understood perfectly she wasn’t wanted for herself. To the mercenary corporation, she’d been an investment and a commodity. What had gutted her every time she remembered—the pain twisting until she was desperate to forget again—was knowing she’d been nothing more than that to her mother as well.

She was done with not being wanted.

“Shaxi—”

“I request that you purge the knowledge of my name from your memory.”

He frowned. “That’s not how the worlds work outside of Hermitaj.”

“How unfortunate.” She pushed herself off the exam table. He took a hasty step back, so she took a step toward him just for the satisfaction of watching him retreat again.

He narrowed his eyes, clearly aware she was toying with him. “My intent was not to hurt you.”

“You didn’t.” She knew her tone was too adamant, so she qualified her answer as she grabbed her boots. “The sealant was all I needed.” Deliberately blanking her tone, she added, “The scan I started based on the unidentified signal is complete with no additional signals detected. So we are done with our work.”

She headed for the med bay door.

“Wait.”

When she glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised, he lifted the leggings she’d left on the table. “Are you just going to walk out there like that?”

“It was ruined anyway.” She spoke his words back at him with a scornful twist and left.

As she headed for her quarters, the last few minutes replayed in her head, far more derisive than anything she could have said. If she had access to Hermitaj’s mind wipe tech, she’d willingly stick her head in that vise and take the vicious jolt a hundred times over to stop the welling humiliation.

Barring that, she needed a distraction.

She stopped by her quarters briefly to don her Hermitaj gear. Though the sonic cleaning had removed all traces of dirt, it couldn’t repair a UTC-year’s worth of wear. But the familiar fit soothed her, and she zipped the combat jacket as high as it would go under her chin before she left her bunk and continued down the corridor. She laid her palm over the suite’s lock and the door chimed quietly then slid open to let her in.

The lights in the twins’ sitting room were muted to a comforting glow, taking the edge off the bright colors. Benedetta was curled in one deep nest of cushions, Alolis cuddled against her side. Torash was on her own pillow, but only an arm’s length away.

Now that Shaxi knew what to look for—the silvery glimmer of their skin even in the low light, the jewel-toned eyes, the flowing yet stylized gestures like water shimmering between its liquid and frozen states—she was surprised she hadn’t known all three women were l’auraly. But then, she supposed believing the mythical l’auraly actually existed would’ve been like hearing a sheership engine and thinking it was a dragon.

Which now made her wonder about dragons.

She stepped just far enough inside the door to let it close. “I wanted to confirm you are all intact.”

Benedetta and Torash nodded while Alolis shrugged.

“I seem to have made myself a very good deal when I bought your services,” Benedetta said. “Winning bar fights, codebreaking, sheership wing-walking. Is there anything you can’t do?”

Seduce a man?

The words were on the tip of Shaxi’s tongue. The tongue where she could still taste Eril’s arousal. If anyone could provide her with advice on that score, presumably these three, crafted to excel at every physical and emotional element of sex, would have more to say than all her archives and data searches.

But she was learning not to ask questions when she didn’t really want answers.

“You have paid for my services, up to and including my life, until the
Asphodel
leaves Khamaseen,” she reminded the other woman. “Whatever you ask for, I will do my best to provide.”

Torash pulled a smaller cushion to her chest. “That sounds like more commitment than any job deserves. That’s almost as bad as—” She cut herself off at a glare from her older sister. “It sounds like slavery.”

“Tory,” Alolis said reprovingly. “Hermitaj mercenaries essentially
were
slaves. They were all initiated young and never had a choice, just like… Well, just like slaves, even if they weren’t wearing chains.”

Alolis plucked at her own clothing. Instead of their usual silky gowns, all three l’auraly were clad in fitted jumpsuits. Three packs were stacked beside the door. In case of more trouble, Shaxi assumed. That too was a good bet.

She glanced back at Alolis. “You did some homework.”

“I was curious why anyone would come here who didn’t have to.” The blonde angled herself slightly farther from Benedetta, a small but telling act of resentment.

“I had nowhere else to go,” Shaxi said.

“Just anyplace along the sheerways,” Torash muttered.

Shaxi hesitated, wondering if she should explain. But the girls should know there were worse options than a luxurious sheership and their sister’s arms. “I came here in hopes the shriving storms will blank what’s left of the Hermitaj programming.”

“The punishment of the sandstorm is bad enough,” Benedetta said. “But the alien elements in the dust whip up an electromagnetic feedback that could destroy even the
Asphodel
. And you’re going to deliberately expose yourself to it?”

Since a certain man didn’t want to see her exposed. Shaxi squelched the errant thought. “That energy could set me free.”

“Or kill you.” Benedetta’s voice was flat, with none of its customary melodic undertow.

“It’s a risk,” Shaxi acknowledged. “But if I can wipe out the failing code, I’ll be…”